Patrick Arguello

Patrick Arguello (30 March 1943-6 September 1970) was a Nicaraguan-American communist revolutionary who worked with the Sandinistas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. On 6 September 1970, he was killed in the failed hijacking of El Al Flight 219 in London, England during the Dawson's Field hijackings.

Biography
Patrick Arguello was born in San Francisco, California, United States on 30 March 1943 to a Nicaraguan father and an American mother of Irish descent, and his family moved to Nicaragua when he was three years old. In 1956, the assassination of Anastasio Somoza Garcia forced Arguello's family to return to the USA, and he went to school in Los Angeles. Arguello developed an interest in Che Guevara and communism while going to school during the 1960s; many of his friends in the student movement were beaten, arrested, or killed for their activism.

Terrorist activities
After graduating from UCLA in 1967, Arguello was granted a scholarship to study medicine in Chile, but he headed to Nicaragua instead, hoping to join the Sandinistas; the group did not trust him because he was American, and he was expelled to Switzerland by the government. From April to June 1970, he attended DFLP training camps near Amman, Jordan, receiving guerrilla training. Arguello and several other Nicaraguan Sandinista emigres joined forces with the PFLP faction in the summer of 1970, and Arguello agreed to take part in the Dawson's Field hijackings in exchange for the PFLP giving military training to the Sandinistas. Arguello, Leila Khaled, and two other PFLP guerrillas were sent to hijack El Al Flight 219 in Amsterdam, Netherlands on 6 September 1970; when the other two guerrillas were unable to board the plane, Arguello and Khaled - posing as a Honduran married couple, were left alone to carry out their task. 30 minutes into the flight, the two approached the cockpit and attempted to hijack the plane, but Arguello's grenade failed to explode down the airliner aisle, and a passenger hit him over the head with a bottle of whiskey after he attempted to pull out his pistol. He wounded a steward with his gun, but he was shot four times by a security guard during the struggle. He died of his wounds after the plane made an emergency landing in London, England.